It's too late to build a life at my age

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I am 43 years old.

I was struggling in my 20s and 30s. Research shows that autistic adults with degrees face worse employment outcomes than any other minority demographic. I struggled to find stable employment, and went through entire years of my life being unemployed and unhoused. I was so desperate that I applied for any job available, but still nobody would hire me. I couldn't even get a job at Wal-Mart of McDonalds. I could not afford a vehicle, so I was extremely limited in where I could search for a job. When I did have employment, I was frequently moving from one low-paying dead-end job to another. The only jobs I could get were the ones that would hire anybody who can pass a drug test, which means they were stressful and low paying.

I tried to get into nursing; I got my CNA license and worked as a nurse aide. Nurse aides have a high turnover, and physically and emotionally draining, often require me to work unconventional hours, and paid horribly. I was unable to keep up financially, but it drained me so much that I had no energy left to get a secondary job. I wanted to go to nursing school, but I did not have the needed pre-required credits and had exhausted my financial aid eligibility.

During this time, I was either unhoused of living with other people. I had no extra money that I could save or invest into any kind of self-improvement. I had no success at dating, and did not even have many opportunities to meet single women. I tried online dating o and off for a while, and only ever met for 4 or 5 women over a period of several years, and none of them led anywhere. I went on a second date with only one of those women, and I felt nothing. For most of those 10-15 years, I was too embarrassed to ask women out because I was broke or didn't have a vehicle. I also went through many mental health crises resulting from all of that.

It wasn't until the end of my 30s that I discovered special education. I started out by subbing in special ed classrooms for a year. I wanted to get into the special ed bootcamp, but that required references I could not get. Then I discovered I qualify for the SPED master program at OU, and that I qualify for financial aid for post graduate school. So I finally completed my master degree at 40 and got a provisional teaching certificate which allowed me to teach in Oklahoma, but I couldn't use it to get a teaching job out of the state. My goal is to get work teaching at a DoDea school in Europe. My state made the process for certification as confusing and expensive as possible. I tried asking other teachers for guidance, but nobody could help because they all got certified through the old process. It took me two years just to find someone who had taken the new test and who could explain it to me. The test costs 300USD. I completed the four tasks, waited for two months to get my results, and ended up missing the passing score by one point. I was allowed to resubmit my tasks, at the cost of 75USD per task; so I resubmitted one task. I waited another two months and barely achieved the passing score. But by this point I had already turned 43.

I submitted my application to the DoDea, and am waiting to hear back for the next step. In the mean time, my state's department of education is doing everything they can sabotage public education. Ryan Walters, the state superintendent of education, wants to force the Bible into every classroom and implement an "America First" test for teachers, which basically seeks to only allow white supremacists to teach in Oklahoma schools. And for all I know, the Orange Man will completely sabotage our relations with the EU to the point where US military bases will be expelled from Europe.

Anyway, my this is all to build up to the title point: at this point, I'm too old to build a life from the bottom up. I'm too old establish a career and save enough money to afford retirement. I'm too old to get married and start a family for a number of reasons, the main one being that I now have ED. I can no longer relate to people my own age, who all have established careers and children in college by my age. I have a lot of trouble with hernias. I could even be refused for employment because of my health.

At this point, even if I become successful at something; that will only make me regret that I didn't try it decades ago.

Mind telling me what those were?

A call center where I had to be the one to get yelled at for what the client screwed up. Not autism friendly in the slightest.

Working as a nurse aide. May not sound bad on the surface, but it is actually exhausting both physically and emotionally. Physically, because its highly demanding and I was frequently asked to stay overnight. Emotionally, because all the patients I bonded with died frequently. It wasn't all bad though, as I was helping people. But it paid so poorly that I just couldn't keep up financially. And because it was so exhausting, I did not have any energy left to work a second job. And there was no real path to advance, because I could not afford nursing school and could not get financial aid for it.

Working on an assembly line in a factory where I had stand and do repetitive tasks all day long.

I worked in a gas station. Having to sell tobacco products was extremely depressing. I once got a job washing dishes while idiot teenagers kept sliding right by me on the greasy floor while carrying knives.

Target once hired me for the holiday season, then got rid of me as soon as the season passed. I flipped burger at McDonald's and Braum's in college, but they wouldn't hire after college when I was desperate for any job I could get.

That's all I can remember at the moment.

Why are you asking? To judge me?

Sounds like a bit of social anxiety here.
I only asked because maybe it's a job I want if the farmer's market doesn't work out for me. I'm high-functioning, probably not level 1, but maybe level 0.6, so maybe I can handle it.

I understand what it's like to struggle to find employment. It seemed that just got progressively harder the more dire my situation became. At one point, I enrolled in a university, but I was not offered enough student loan money to afford. So I dropped out and used the student loan to buy a cheap car. It gave me a lot of trouble and stopped working after a month or two, but it was I needed to get a job and back on my feet. Having a vehicle really helped.

Wow, it's sounds like you have had a really rough go of it Nightwing82. It's most likely not your fault that you have struggled with employment over the years, many people with autism have struggled to find their way in this world, I know I have.

I would suggest looking into people who became successful later in life as a way to help maintain some hope. Ricky Gervais didn't make it big as an actor until he was in his early 40's and one of my favorite writers Charles Bukowski didn't get his first financially lucrative publishing deal until he was about 50 or so.

So hang in there bud, we're all in this together.

P.S. congratulations on passing that test for your special ed course.

At some point I will try to address this in greater detail, but I want to say you have accomplished a great deal in your life. You are stronger than most people.

Don't dwell on leaving your state. Christians to my understanding have nothing against special education. You should have a perfectly good career in Oklahoma.

I don't know the details about your ED, but Sildenafil will probably help should you find yourself in situation in which that matters. As for getting married, it's possible to identify as Muslim without being pious. Don't reject the possibility of finding a marital connection through the Islamic community. I have said in the past that arranged marriage is a better deal than it seems to most Westerners.

Sorry for the sloppy response.